Monday, October 19, 2015

SHFG to Host Roundtable on 1965 Immigration Act

[We're moving this up, as the lecture is this Thursday.]
[Via H-Law, we have the following announcement.]

The Society for History in the Federal Government announces the Annual Richard G. Hewlett Lecture and Reception: “Legacies of the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965”

The Society’s annual Richard G. Hewlett Lecture will be held at the Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, DC, on Thursday, October 22. A meet and greet reception will begin at 6 p.m., followed by a roundtable discussion on the Immigration Act of 1965 at 7 p.m.

Signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on October 3, 1965, this act significantly reformed the United States' immigration procedures by eliminating national origins quotas as defined by the Immigration Act of 1924 and replacing the quotas with overall hemispheric caps on visas issued to applicants. Fifty years after the Immigration Act's implementation, the Hewlett Lecture panelists will briefly discuss the legacies of the Immigration Act, then will engage the audience in a question-and-answer session.

The roundtable will feature Tom Gjelten, Correspondent for Religion and Belief on the National Desk at NPR; Marian L. Smith, former Chief Historian for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; Ruth Wasem, currently a Kluge Fellow at the Library of Congress; Phil Wolgin, Center for American Progress, For more information and registration, [here.]